Wieneke Archive Book 4j : War Presscuttings

The Berlin Wall:. I HAVE just come back from Berlin. last time I was there was 30 years in the midst of the Russian Blockade Airlift Crisis. When the House of Representatives in Canberra went into recess in July 1948 I set off by flying -boat for Bri- tain and Europe - at my own expense, by the way - to try to improve my political edu- cation and to attend an Inter- national Bar Conference at The Hague as one of Austra- lia' two delegates; Menzies was the other one. Before I left, the Prime Minister, Mr Chifley, promised to rise his influence with the British Government to get me . flown into Berlin. He was as good as his word 'and at dawn on August 19 I climbed aboard an RAF trans - 'port plane and was strapped in alongside a young RAF pilot. The Blockade was then at Its perilous height. By agree- ments made at Yalta, Pots - darn and later, Germany was to be divided into four zones occupied by the Soviet, the United States, Britain and (later) France respectively. Uneasy arrangement At the war's end Berlin was about a 180 kilometres inside the Soviet zone, but it was agreed that it should be treat- ed as an international city, divided into four sectors each under the control of one of the four Powers, with free ac- cess for the three Western Al- lies to their respective sectors by air, road, rail and water. This uneasy arrangement continued for some years until suddenly on June 24, 1948, the Russians blocked all surface access. Air access down the defined corridors was not blocked. To do so the Russians would have had to shoot down Allied planes, which would have meant war and the Americans had the atomic bomb and Russia did not. The Soviet objective was plain enough: they wanted Control of all Berlin. The two and a half million Germans in the three sec tors comprising West Berlin could not survive without massive supplies of coal, food, machin- ery and medical and other lousterlate hitherto brought in by road, rail and water if by depriving them of these they ennui be starved and frozen submission they would turn to the East and the Western Allies would withdraw. The Islork,ide was die first The ago, and ultimate SIR Howard Beale was in the hustle and bustle of Australian post-war politics. He entered the Federal Parliament in 1946 and held several portfolios in various Menzies governments before being Ambassador to Washington from 1957 to 1964. In this article he revisits Berlin - 30 years after the Russian Blockade. great confrontation of the Cold War and it presented Britain, France and the United States with a grave di- lemma: to give in to Soviet pressure would destroy their credibility not only with West Berliners but with all Ger- mans, leading, sooner or later, to communist control over all, or most, of Germany. On the other hand, to stand firm was to risk war; indeed there were those smog the Al- lies who wanted to use force to break the Blockade and, when this led to war, to drop the bomb and have done with It. More cautious counsets pre- vailed and it was decided to try to do what seemed almost impossible, namely to keep the people of West Berlin alive by a gigantic and quite unprece- dented airlift. This was the position when my pilot and I took off on August 19 across the North Sea, over Hamburg and down the 32 -kilometre - wide air corridor into Gatow airport in the British sector of Berlin. We were frequently "buzzed" by Russian MIGs which swept past, above, below and in front of us: I was never so frightened in my life. At Gatow I was met by the Head of the Australian Mili- tary Mission, Brigadier, "Black Jack," Galleghan. Captured by 'the Japanese at Singapore, he had been in titular charge of . all Australian prisoners of war after General Bennett escaped to Australia at the time of the surrender. He was a fine soldier, blunt, tough, yet compassionate, and greatly admired by his men. I stayed with him while I was in Berlin, and he took me to see everything and everyone - Allied military men and ci- vilian officials, and Gentian officials and administrators. I had been taught German well at school, but had not spoken it for 30 years. Never- theless some of it soon came back to me; my accent was all right but the Germans must surely have winced at my grammar, Despite much cleaning up since the end of the War Ber- lin in 1948 was a beetle of fearful destruction. Most of what Allied air bombing had not wrecked Russian artillery had. Great public buildings. - - died ra Is, 'opera houses, muse- ums and railway, stations had been blown apart; parks had been stripped of trees with only stumps standing; statues of the German great in the parks and public places had been blown down, often with legs sticking up in the air and heads torn off; there was a vague smell of dust, sulphur and sometimes of decay in the air. I thought at the time (quite wrongly as it turned out) that Berlin could never be rebuilt. The Brandenburg Tor, the great eighteenth century vic- tory gate at the top of the Charlottenberger Strasse, was battered and its winged vic- tory figure torn from the top. On the left, just within the British sector, the Reichstag stood gutted by the fire lit by the nazis in the plot which helped to bring Hitler to flower. Through the Brandenburg gate, along the tinter den Linden inside the Russian sector, the scene of desolation was even worse because little attempt seemed to have been made at restoration. Nearby was what had been the Reichschancellery with Hitler's bunker underneath it, but the Chancellery was row nothing but rubble and the bunker itself had been blown up and completely tilled in by the Russians who were deter- mined that it should not sur- vive as some sort of a shrine for future nazi -minded Ger- mans. I wanted to vomit As "Black Jack" and I walked along Charlottenburger Strasse and the Tlergarten I suddenly found myself com- pelled to step to the side of the road wanting to vomit. When I apologised to him for this display of weakness he said: "Don't worry. I felt the same the first time. It gets You doesn't it?" General Lucius Clay, the Cloveirnor of die three com- bined Allied sectors, and his British Deputy General Brian Robertson, were away. but had talks with Robertson's deputy, Clenerat BroWnJohli, a fine, coal and controlled sni- ffler; Sir Cecil Weir, Ch?.tr- man of the Eccnomi.: Cam- mittee trying to restore the flerman economy; niiel with Robert Murphy, General Clay's political adviser who was already famous for his participation with General Giratid in the winning over of the Free French in North Africa in 1943. I asked Murphy how It was that the Allies had got them- selves into their present tangle In Berlin. He had a slow, drawling voice and a dry manner. He simply said, "Well I guess we kind of trusted the Russians." Murphy and I were later to become friends when I went to Washington and he was Under Secretary of State under Eisenhower. There were lunches, dinners and receptions every day I was there, with Allied officers and their wives, and West German officials and civilians. with their fair-haired con- sorts, too, and not a little champagne and whisky. It was a time of enormous tension: we literally did not know what each new day might bring, or whether some incident might occur launching us into World War HI. To my perhaps overheated imagination the atmosphere lay somehwere between the Duchess of Richmond's ball before Waterloo, and "eat, drink and be merry for to- morrow we die." All this time and for months afterward the Airlift went on with Increasing in- tensity and effectivness. In total there were more than 200,000 flights, and at the height of the Airlift about 13,000 tons of coal, machinery and other material were un- loaded each day. It operated in all weathers 24 hours a day, the big planes coming in and taking off sometimes every half minute. At Tempelhof and at Gatow I watched them at night com- ing In under arc lights, screaming to a standstill, the - bomb bays opening and the , sacks- Of coal. boxes of ma- chinery, food and other goods quickly lowered into the Wait- ing trucks, and then turning 71 round and roaring otll again Into the night. THE wall at if Before the end Is much was coming in had come in by road, water before the Blocks. It was a triumph of sation and timing, broke the Blockade. Ai writers have been inch treat the Airlift as if solely a United States e of the RAF effort was superb, toe they had bigger bombe more of them; but the Their effort was aupe pilots h. flying and fighting fe:, and some looked bon( but they brought the casters in and swum out again with cool Pr The people stood firm were terrified of the In without reason, repeatedlyrat Nazi oantsrtocraiti, the Sastern front - LW of the Western on one occasion. 300,000 shirt in the Tiergarte, the burnt out Reichstn The great danger w. the Russians, seeing ti- Dlockade WikS faillnis, to shoot, but ti danger,ie'lienspstoiati peoplef di s m tooroc had to he taken. In General Clay's we Western Powers, "face most vital issue in th since the Hitler aggi I determined to Berlin "up to the There was no war in II months, the Russia. the Blockade and !Armes went away. Eve ,VVwristvel.36.tril,i,t,it ble,),IevAer, ilr